Early that morning…

"Would you hurry up?" Kurenai shouted behind her as she descended a flight of stairs, holding her swollen belly. When she got to the little red car down below, Asuma still had not made it out of the door, so she laid on the horn.

After about ten seconds, a pissed Asuma came out, leaned over the rail, and yelled in a loud whisper, "People are trying to sleep, you crazy bitch!"

"Do I look like I fucking care?! Get your ass down here, we're gonna be late!" she yelled in response.

"Why don't you take some happy pills, you freaking hormonal woman?" Asuma said under his breath as he locked the door and made his way to the car.

Iruka woke to the sound of a car horn blaring somewhere outside his apartment.

"Fuck," he said groggily and rolled off the couch onto the floor. On all fours, Iruka crawled past the crappy coffee table, then standing he walked to the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face in hopes of making himself feeling better. He began brushing his teeth and headed to his bedroom.

He walked in slowly and started to feel sorry for himself. "Fuck! I'm late!" he exclaimed, toothpaste flying when he saw the alarm clock by the bed.

13 minutes later, he pulled into the small parking lot of the Pick It, Watch, and Drop, the video store where he worked. He cut off the ignition with a sigh. As he walked across the parking lot, he pulled his hair up in its normal ponytail.

"Iruka where that hell you been? You're like a half hour late!"

"Hey Izumo, dude, sorry my power went out last night and my alarm clo-"

"Dude, don't lie, you just look like you're in pain," Izumo interrupted him.

"Fuck off!"Iruka said, irritated that he saw through his lie.

"See ya later, and don't be late tomorrow, asshole." Izumo said with a smile as he headed to the bus stop.

"Whatever," Iruka muttered under his breath and as pulled his inside-out shirt off and replaced it right side out.

The video store smelled faintly of shoe polish and stale popcorn, Iruka moved behind the counter and started sorting videos.



Things were pretty slow; there was the occasional movie watcher and "where is this" person. Other than that though, Iruka was lost in his own thoughts, ranging from what he had for lunch yesterday to his shoe size to Kakashi.

Iruka popped some Monty Python video in the VCR and pressed rewind. He leaned onto the lime-green countertop and watched absentmindedly as the movie played backwards.

As Iruka watched the mess of colors, his mind trailed back to when he first met Kakashi.

SPACED OUT THINKINGS--

It was early autumn, and classes were starting back up. The air was cold and crisp, but in the sun, it made him drowsy. He could hear the sound of students nearby. Above all the usual scraping of feet, bits of conversations overheard. He could hear a more demanding, screaming voice speaking about the beauty of the springful youth.

Iruka's foot twitched and he paid no mind to the voice, but he could tell it was getting closer.

Iruka lay sprawled on top of a stone bench somewhere in the middle of campus. He laid there in between awakeness and sleep, softly singing the same lyric over and over to himself. "Part your lips a bit more/I'll swallow your fears."

A soft gust of wind made the papers around him crackle and snap in its wake.

He stopped singing. There was the sound of someone running. Iruka opened his eyes and went to sit up, but quickly dropped back down.

There was a guy with a shock of white hair jumping over a bush and then onto the table, barely missing Iruka's side.

The white haired guy looked down, locked eyes with Iruka and said, "I was never here," as his other foot met the stone bench.

Then he was on the ground running towards the engineer buildings. He looked back over his shoulder searching the bushes for his pursuer and then to Iruka and was gone.

Iruka sat up, forehead creased in confusion. He started to pack his things up, when out of the bushes came a shout, "Kakashi, my rival, where are you?"

Iruka stuffed a book into his bag and zipped it when out of the bushes stepped a guy so energetic that it made Iruka want to cower in fear. He was clad in a green jumpsuit that accentuated every bulge and muscle on the guy's body.

In one swift movement, the guy pointed his finger at Iruka, stating rather loudly and obviously that he was not Kakashi, his opponent, before demanding to know where he was.



Iruka didn't answer right away. He was too busy looking at the eyebrows on the guy. He finally spat out a, "What?"

The green jumpsuit wearing man jogged over to Iruka, which in turn, nearly caused Iruka to jump over the table. "Are you feeling okay? The young at times are often fickle and unaware."

Finally gaining his normalcy back, Iruka spoke, "Believe me, I am aware of a lot of things." He didn't look at the eyebrow man while he said this. "What's your question?" He slung his bag over his shoulder.

"I was looking for my hip rival, Hatake Kakashi! I wish to indulge in a competitors race with him."

"Okay creepy man," Iruka thought as he walked past the dude. "Well, sorry, I didn't see anyone, I was asleep." He hatched his thumb towards the bench and walked off.

Nevertheless, behind him Iruka heard a vow to find Kakashi and to once more be showered in his youthful hip new ways.

Iruka stumbled out of the circle of bushes, looking back once more to eyebrow man. Then he fell into the slow current of the river of the students. He tried to shake off the disturbing images of the green jumpsuit ma n jogging towards him. "AH!"

"College is so not like high school, the people are fucking weirder." There was a gust of cold air and Iruka looked up, taking notice of the navy blue hoodie that was walking beside him.

Two pale hands pulled the fabric from the figures head. Under the hood was the white haired dude. Whitey looked over to Iruka and smiled, "Thanks for that back there."

Iruka looked down at his feet and smiled. This was by far the hottest guy he had seen since he got here. "No problem, dude-man is pretty creepy." Iruka turned as he said this, searching for said stalker in the throng behind them.

"Gai , yeah, he's a bit obsessive." He said grinning, "Never seen you here before, so you're what? A first year?"

"Yeah, I'm Iruka and I assume you're Kakashi?"

Whitey stepped back and bowed. "That would be me." He smiled, as he stood upright.

"Sooo, you wa-" Kakashi was cut off by a familiar voice behind them. They both looked back and saw Gai shoving his way towards them, getting the occasional bird as he did.

"Kakashi, my friend, let us indulge in a comparison of strength between you and I!"

Iruka looked to Kakashi, but the hood was back up and he was weaving his way towards the parking lots.

END SPACED OUT THINKINGS--



There was a ding and Iruka snapped back to a reality that was not nearly as interesting as the one he was just recalling. He looked up at the door and saw Naruto.

"Hey!" he smiled.